The National Cricket Academy Committee cleared the decks for the setting up of four more zonal academies at their meeting in Mumbai on Monday. The Vidarbha, Punjab and Maharashtra Cricket Associations, besides the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai, will run these academies for trainees in the Under-14 and Under-16 age groups.

Former Board President and Chairman of the NCA Committee, Raj Singh Dungarpur, told PTI that the CCI will select 20 trainees from around the country and utilise their own (club) funds, while the other three associations would select boys from their respective zones and get a 50% subsidy from the board.

"The BCCI has also agreed to start a National Cricket Museum which will chronicle the milestones of Indian cricket from 1940s to 2001 called 'From C K Nayudu to Sachin Tendulkar' over 8,500 square feet of built-up space next to the BCCI office at the Brabourne Stadium" added Dungarpur.

The five zonal academies already sanctioned are based at Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi and Kanpur. They were scheduled to begin their sessions from April 20 but Dungarpur revealed that the launch date has now been postponed to May 1, after the completion of annual examinations all over the country.

Meanwhile former former Services and Bihar wicketkeeper Daljit Singh has declined the post of the NCA's North Zone chief coach. BCCI Vice President C K Khanna said in Delhi on Monday he got intimation to this effect from the Board adding that the selection of trainees would now be made after the BCCI working committee sorts out the issue at its meeting in the capital on April 24.

Khanna refused to react to reports that the job for which Daljit Singh had been chosen was now being offered to former Test cricketer Yashpal Sharma. Sharma himself, when reached, said the only intimation he had in writing was that he had been appointed as one of the coaches for North Zone. "I don't know anything beyond that," he told PTI.

According to Board sources, the whole matter of the North Zone academy had become confusing with news that Mohali, the original choice for the zonal academy and ignored in favour of Delhi, would now get to train cricketers under 14 and 16. "What is left for Delhi then?" asked a Delhi cricket official.

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